I've had the bike for 2 days now and I gone on one familiar ride and one new, very challenging ride.
The familiar ride, to the top of Santa Teresa Park, which was challenging last week on my 20+ year old Trek 850, was a piece of cake on the X-Caliber 7. Climbs were comparatively effortless and the 29 inch wheels smoothed out some of the rough spots.
The new challenging ride, up the trails at St. Joseph's Hill Open Space Preserve in Los Gatos, would have been impossible on my old bike. It was difficult today, but doable and it's now my goal to get to the point where this ride is easy too.
My rear end insists that I say something about the stock saddle. It will need to be replaced soon. OUCH!

I love the bike but the Arnold Missouri store has very young employees. While I was at the store trying to decide which model to buy, the kid helping me said " I dont know much about mountain bikes, I ride road bikes". Luckily I had done my own research.

My title said "purchasing a bike should be fun" and yes this was fun. The crew at the TREK store in Omaha, Papio store to be exact were helpful professional courteous and every other superlative word i can think of were fantastic I couldn't ask for a more enjoyable time while making the purchase. now the bike that is another story.It is everything i came to believe about TREK bikes this is my second TREK my first was a TREK 820 mtb it was a good ride. but someone decided they wanted it more than i did. But that's water under the bridge. The X-Caliber7 is everything I wanted and then some. Probably over kill for what i use it for BUT now that i have a bike i can trust and not have to worry
about what is breaking next i will ride more and further maybe even think about a stage or 2 on bran or maybe the full ride. whats great about the bike good question was bad would be easier to answer the saddle is UNCOMFORTABLE everything else is fantastic. The bike is a dream to ride couldn't ask for a better machine. and papio store keep up the good work